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Lincoln’s Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months That Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War Audiobook
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A brilliant, authoritative, and riveting account of the most critical six months in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation and changed the course of the Civil War.
On July 12, 1862, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency, an episode during which the sixteenth president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Most surprising, the man who would be remembered as “The Great Emancipator” did not hold firm to his belief in emancipation. He agonized over the decision and was wracked by private doubts almost to the moment when he inked the decree that would change a nation.
Popular myth would have us believe that Lincoln did not suffer from such indecision, that he did what he did through moral resolve; that he had a commanding belief in equality, in the inevitable victory of right over wrong. He worked on drafts of the document for months, locking it in a drawer in the telegraph room of the War department. Ultimately Lincoln chose to act based on his political instincts and knowledge of the war. It was a great gamble, with the future of the Union, of slavery, and of the presidency itself hanging in the balance.
In this compelling narrative, Todd Brewster focuses on these critical six months to ask: was it through will or by accident, intention or coincidence, personal achievement or historical determinism that he freed the slaves? The clock is always ticking through this narrative as Lincoln searches for the right moment to enact his proclamation and simultaneously turn the tide of war. Lincoln’s Gamble portrays the president as an imperfect man with an unshakable determination to save a country he believed in, even as the course of the Civil War remained unknown.
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“It’s hard to act from strength and a higher moral conviction when the war you’re waging is not going well. But in this wonderful study, Todd Brewster authoritatively evokes the strategy of our best president to change the terms of the Civil War and thereby the destiny of his nation.”
— Ken Burns
Quotes
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“Brewster gets inside Abraham Lincoln’s mind, revealing his struggles with the limited powers of his office. Here is Lincoln, the man, surprisingly ambivalent about the decision for which he is most remembered. A masterful psychological portrait.”
— George Stephanopoulos -
“Brewster brings elegant clarity to the tangle of conflicting ideologies, loyalties, and practicalities that pushed the proclamation forward, ultimately ensuring Lincoln’s legacy as the Great Emancipator.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Brewster narrates with a professorial clarity that emphasizes information but does not subsume emotion.”
— AudioFile
Awards
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Nominated for the 2015 Audie Award for History/Biography
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About Todd Brewster
Todd Brewster is an American author, journalist, and film producer. He has served as Don E. Ackerman director of oral history at the United States Military Academy, West Point, and is a longtime journalist who has worked as an editor for Time, Life, and as senior producer for ABC News. He has written for Vanity Fair, Time, Life, the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and is coauthor, with the late Peter Jennings, of the bestselling books The Century, The Century for Young People, and In Search of America. He lives with his wife and two sons in Ridgefield, Connecticut.